With the explosive growth of the Internet, there has been a growing trend towards Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. IP telephony allows various devices, often referred to as end-points, such as dedicated IP phones or specially configured personal computers, to initiate and receive telephone calls over the Internet or private data networks. Generally, the voice signal is compressed and translated into IP packets for transmission over the network(s).
IP telephony offers many benefits to both carriers and users that have contributed to its rapid deployment. Eventually, IP telephony technologies may replace traditional circuit switched telephony technologies, such as the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN). In the meantime, however, there is a substantial installed base of traditional telephone systems served by the PSTN and IP telephony must co-exist with traditional telephone systems.
A number of products are available that allow enterprises to integrate their traditional telephone systems, such as private branch exchange (PBX) switches with IP telephony features. The IP Office™ product, commercially available from Avaya, Inc., of Basking Ridge, N.J., supports voice and data communications. IP Office™ can be set up as a traditional PBX, an IP telephony server, or a combination of both. Thus, the IP Office™ product allows an enterprise to immediately implement traditional telephony, and evolve to IP over time, or to immediately implement a full IP solution.
While these emerging IP telephony products effectively allow enterprises to transition to IP telephony communications, some of the products have been difficult to administer. A number of early administration tools for such switches required specific user training and provided little, if any, assistance with the entry of configuration information. In addition, once the configuration information was entered, such administration tools allowed the configuration information to be changed without ensuring the accuracy of such changes or without providing a mechanism to resolve any errors created by the changes.
A need therefore exists for an administration tool for an enterprise telephone switch that provides improved installation and administration, with increased efficiency and reliability. A further need exists for an administration tool that can validate configuration data for the enterprise telephone switch and efficiently guide a user or administrator through error resolution.